60. Sūrat al-Mumtaḥana

Thirteen verses. Medinan. One of the texts in which the Qurʾān regulates in most detail a community's relation with what lies outside it; and probably the sūra most often misquoted on this subject.

The difficulty of the sūra is here: its first verse is very hard, its eighth verse is very wide, and both are in the same sūra. Without closing the distance between them the sūra is not understood. Indeed the sūra itself sets aside a special verse to close that distance — the seventh — and that verse brings back the key word of the first verse in a positive direction.

The sūra consists of three blocks, and all three ask the same question at different levels: how far with the other side?

The first block (1-3): A prohibition is laid down. The subject of the prohibition, as we shall dwell on at length below, is not "affection" but walāya (the bond of mutual protection) — backing someone, going over to his side, handing your affairs to him. Immediately after the prohibition come two grounds: the actual conduct of the other side (verse 2), and the fact that the anxiety about kin which is the cause of the prohibition's being breached carries no weight in the hereafter (verse 3).

The second block (4-9): An example and a balance. The example is Abraham (Ibrāhīm) (4 and 6); the balance is set up in the seventh verse: "Perhaps God will put affection between you and those with whom you are at enmity." And the block closes with the two most important verses of the sūra (8-9): the measure of the prohibition is not belief but deed.

The third block (10-13): Application. The situation of the women who emigrate, the financial settlement, the women's pledge of allegiance, and the closing prohibition.

The skeleton of the sūra is carried by a single root: و-ل-ي. The sūra opens with one pattern of this root (awliyāʾ — 1), returns in the middle with another pattern (yatawalla — 6), gives the exact definition of the prohibition with it again (an tawallawhum — 9), and closes with it again (lā tatawallaw — 13). Without solving the root the sūra is not solved; for this reason we shall dwell at length on the first verse.

The name comes from the verb فَٱمْتَحِنُوهُنَّ (fa'mtaḥinūhunna — "then test them") in the tenth verse. The sūra is therefore read both as al-Mumtaḥina (the one testing, active participle) and as al-Mumtaḥana (the one tested, passive participle), and both readings occur in the sources.

The two readings point to two different subjects: in the first the community that conducts the test, in the second the woman who is tested. On which of them is the earlier I do not speak with certainty. But this can be said: what gives the sūra its name is not a concept but a procedure — the question of how it is to be established whether someone really believes. And the sūra answers this question, as we shall see below, by setting a limit to it as well.

It is transmitted that the sūra is also called al-Imtiḥān and al-Mawadda. The second is worth noting: the name of the sūra is then taken from the same word that occurs both in a forbidden context (verse 1) and in a hoped-for context (verse 7).

There is no disagreement that the sūra is Medinan. Its content says as much already: a homeland from which people have emigrated, relatives left behind, an order of treaties, a distinction between war and peace, women coming as a body to give their pledge. All of these are situations belonging to the Medinan period.

It is widely said that the different verses of the sūra came down at different times; in particular it is transmitted that verses 10-11 are tied to the period after the Treaty of al-Ḥudaybiya, and verses 1-3 to the preparation for the conquest of Mecca. I transmit this classification as a possibility; on the dating of the verses one by one I do not speak with certainty.

For the first verses of the sūra there is an event widely transmitted in the hadith sources. I transmit the event, but first I must enter three caveats:

1. I transmit the report according to its sense, not its wording; there are differences among its variants. 2. The name of the Companion transmitted as the central figure of the event occurs in the reports consistently as Ḥāṭib b. Abī Baltaʿa. That the name should occur so consistently is worth noting; even so, in this commentary I establish no ruling by way of the name, because to speak about the personal situation of an individual is not the business of the sūra. 3. It must be recorded that the event is transmitted as the background not of the whole of the sūra but of its opening verses.

The event transmitted is this: while preparations for an expedition against Mecca were being kept secret, one of the emigrants in Medina attempted to send a letter to Mecca; the letter spoke of the preparations. The matter came to be known, the person carrying the letter was caught on the road and the letter seized. When questioned, the man denied any intention of treachery and gave his ground thus: he had family and property in Mecca and no clan there to protect them; he had wished to secure his family by creating an obligation towards himself in the eyes of Quraysh. It is transmitted that the Prophet did not punish him, and protected him on the ground that he had taken part at Badr.

The value of this event for understanding the sūra is great, and the reason is this: the way the prohibition is breached is not treachery but anxiety. The man is not going over to the enemy's ranks; he is thinking of the relatives he left behind. And the third verse of the sūra answers exactly this: "Neither your kin nor your children will profit you." That is, the text is not drawing an abstract description of treason; it is aiming at a very familiar, very human weakness.

And the outcome of the event is meaningful too: the person is not punished. The sūra lays down a ruling, but the event does not close with an execution. That these two stand together must be kept in mind while reading the severity of the sūra.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā tattakhidhū ʿaduwwī wa ʿaduwwakum awliyāʾa tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati wa qad kafarū bimā jāʾakum mina'l-ḥaqq, yukhrijūna'r-rasūla wa iyyākum an tuʾminū billāhi rabbikum, in kuntum kharajtum jihādan fī sabīlī wa'btighāʾa marḍātī, tusirrūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati wa anā aʿlamu bimā akhfaytum wa mā aʿlantum, wa man yafʿalhu minkum fa-qad ḍalla sawāʾa's-sabīl

"O you who believe! Do not take My enemy and your enemy as allies — you are reaching out to them with affection; yet they have denied the truth that came to you, and they drive out the Messenger and you because you have believed in God your Lord. If you have gone out to strive in My way and to seek My good pleasure… You convey affection to them in secret; yet I know better what you have concealed and what you have made known. Whoever among you does this has strayed from the very middle of the way."

The verse is difficult to translate; in the middle of the sentence there is a conditional clause whose apodosis has been suppressed. We shall take this up below.

This verse is one of those in the Qurʾān most often misused by way of simplification. The simplification runs like this: "The verse forbids forming friendships with unbelievers." Because this sentence confuses two separate words with one another, it makes the verse say something it does not say.

There are two different roots in the verse, and the two belong to two different things:

• و-ل-ي (awliyāʾ) — attachment, backing, being on someone's side. This is the object of the forbidden act.
• و-د-د (mawadda) — affection, the inclination of the heart. This is not the object of the forbidden act.

Let us look at the grammar of the sentence. The prohibition lies in a single verb: لَا تَتَّخِذُوا۟ … أَوْلِيَآءَ — "do not take as allies". This verb has two objects: ʿaduwwī wa ʿaduwwakum (the first object) and awliyāʾa (the second object). This is the act forbidden: to place the enemy in the position of a walī.

Then what is tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati? This is a circumstantial clause attached to the sentence of prohibition — that is, it describes not the object of the forbidden act but how that act takes place. It comes out thus: "…do not take as allies — you being all the while people who reach out to them with affection". The sentence shows through which channel the walāya flows: by way of affection.

The strongest proof that this distinction is real lies not somewhere far off but six verses later in the same sūra:

عَسَى ٱللَّهُ أَن يَجْعَلَ بَيْنَكُمْ وَبَيْنَ ٱلَّذِينَ عَادَيْتُم مِّنْهُم مَّوَدَّةً "Perhaps God will put between you and those of them with whom you are at enmity an affection." (60/7)

The same word. In one verse it occurs as the instrument of the offence; six verses later as something God will bring about. Had mawadda itself been forbidden, the seventh verse would contradict the first. It does not. Then what is forbidden is not mawadda.

Why, in that case, is mawadda mentioned in the first verse? Because it is the instrument actually used in the event. The verse is not making a definition; it is entering a diagnosis: these people have not gone over to the enemy's ranks; they are conveying something to them out of a feeling of closeness, and what they convey serves the other side's purposes. Affection is here not the offence itself but the cause and the carrier of the offence.

When this distinction is not preserved the verse is corrupted in both directions. In one direction a reading emerges that counts every human closeness an offence — which the seventh and eighth verses plainly reject. In the other direction what the verse really does forbid — putting the security of your own community into the other side's hands — becomes invisible.

The root و-ل-ي. The concrete sense of the root is nearness and leaving no gap in between: two things being adjacent in such a way that no third can come between them.

The derivatives show this plainly:

• وَلِيَ الشَّىءُ الشَّىءَ — one thing came immediately after another, adjoined it.
• الوَلِىّ — among rains, the second rain that comes immediately after the first. No gap in between.
• وَالٍ (wālī) — the one who takes charge of a matter, who undertakes it.
• مَوْلَى (mawlā) — and this word runs both ways: it is used both for the master and for the freed slave. The reason is plain: the word states not a position but a bond; both ends of the bond take the same name.
• أَوْلَى (awlā) — nearer, having the prior claim.
• تَوَلَّى (tawallī) — and here the word divides in two: tawallāhu (he turned towards him, he took him in charge) and tawallā ʿanhu (he turned away from him). Turning towards and turning one's back, in the same pattern. The reason is again the sense of the root: in both there is a taking of a direction; to go near the one you turn to is to fall far from the other.

The definition that emerges is this: a walī is the party between you and whom you leave no gap. The one to whom you refer your affairs, against whom you lean your back, who can speak in your name, who stands in the same rank as you.

The use of the word in the Qurʾān is likewise legal and political, not emotional. The walī of an orphan conducts his affairs. The walī of a man who has been killed demands his right. God is the walī of the believers — that is, the one who takes them in charge, who conducts their affairs ("God is the walī of those who believe; He brings them out of the darknesses into the light", al-Baqara 2/257).

The English rendering "friend" shifts the meaning of the verse here. In English "friend" is an almost entirely emotional word: someone you love, someone you feel close to. A walī, by contrast, states a position. To put the two in each other's place is to turn a sentence of law into a sentence of feeling. What the verse forbids is not warming to someone; it is going over to someone's side, making him a partner in your own affairs, feeling an obligation towards him.

Indeed the verse confirms this reading itself: when the prohibition is defined afresh in the ninth verse, the verb used is أَن تَوَلَّوْهُمْ — that is, again the same root, and this time on its own, without the word mawadda. The sūra lays down its prohibition twice; in laying it down the second time it says nothing at all about affection.

The root و-د-د. And this root has an interesting feature: it carries both the sense to love and the sense to want, to wish.

• وَدَّهُ — he loved him.
• وَدَّ لَوْ… — he wished, he wanted, that…

The two senses stand together, because love in this Arabic word is not a passive feeling but an inclination and a wanting. The one you love is the one about whom you want something.

الوَدُود is one of the names of God: both greatly loving and greatly loved. And the word occurs in the Qurʾān in the highest of positive contexts: "For those who believe and do righteous deeds al-Raḥmān will bring about an affection (wudd)" (Maryam 19/96).

مَوَدَّة, for its part, is the verbal noun of the root on the mafʿala pattern, and it states the outwardly expressed, relation-forming state of love. That is, not merely a feeling held within; something that reaches the other party. Indeed the verse says exactly this: tulqūna ilayhim — you cast it towards them.

And now comes one of the finest points of the verse. Look at the second verse:

وَوَدُّوا۟ لَوْ تَكْفُرُونَ "And they wished that you should return to unbelief." (60/2)

The same root. On one side the mawadda the believers send to the other party, on the other side the other party's wudd concerning the believers. Both are و-د-د. And their contents are exact opposites: one is "to want good for someone", the other "to want him to lose his faith".

The sūra does not set up a separate sentence to say this; it says it by using the same root in two verses in two directions. What the verse criticises thereby becomes clear: the problem is not affection itself but affection's being unreturned and one-directional; the closeness one side sends corresponds on the other side to something else — the wish that faith be lost.

أَلْقَى — the ifʿāl pattern of the root ل-ق-ي: to throw, to let fall, to convey. It has concrete uses in the Qurʾān: the casting down of the staff, Joseph's being let down into the well, the throwing down of the tablets.

The normal use of the verb takes its object directly: alqa'sh-shayʾa — he threw the thing. But here a بِ has come in between: tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati. In the classical exegetical and grammatical discussion this particle has given rise to two different readings:

The second reading overlaps exactly with the event of revelation described above: there really is something cast, something sent — a letter — and what makes it be sent is affection. That the object of the verb is left unsaid also suits this reading: it is left unsaid because the addressees already know what was sent.

The point at which the two readings meet in practice is this: in both cases something goes out from inside to outside, and the cause of its going out is a feeling. I find the second reading the stronger; but this is a preference, and it is not binding.

عَدُوّ — the root ع-د-و: to overstep the limit, to transgress, to pass beyond a boundary. From the same root come ʿudwān (aggression), iʿtidāʾ (transgression), ʿadā (he ran — that is, he went out from where he was). At the centre of the word stands the trampling of a limit; that is, enmity is here named not as a feeling but as a violation. This detail already prepares the measure of the eighth verse: the matter lies not in feelings but in deeds.

The word has come in the singular (ʿaduww), not the plural. This pattern of this root is used in Arabic like a verbal noun and is said in the same form for a single person and for a body of people; the Qurʾān uses it so in other places too.

The order is striking: "My enemy and your enemy." God's enmity comes first.

This has two consequences:

First: Enmity is not defined as a personal quarrel. The measure is not "who did you harm" but what position has been taken towards the truth. That is, the verse does not set up the logic of a blood feud.

Second — and more important: This very ordering implies that the enmity is changeable. A personal quarrel may be permanent; but an enmity arising from a position ends when the position changes. The seventh verse will say this plainly.

"They drive out the Messenger and you — because you have believed in God your Lord."

There are two points here.

First, the form of the verb. Yukhrijūna is imperfect — not past tense. Yet the driving out is over and done; the emigration lies behind them. The function of the imperfect here is to keep the scene alive: it tells the event not as a finished occurrence but as though it were going on before your eyes. We do this in English too: "so the man gets up, slams the door and walks out" — telling a past event in the present tense.

But it may have a second function as well: to state that the attitude of driving out continues. That is, the event is over, the attitude is not.

Second, the ground of the driving out. أَن تُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ رَبِّكُمْ — here the construction beginning with an states cause (in grammar, mafʿūl lahu): "because you believed in God".

This caveat looks simple but carries the whole logic of the sūra. In describing what the other side did, the verse counts a single cause: faith. Not a dispute over property, not a blood feud, not a quarrel over borders. People were driven from their homes because they believed.

And this is the other face of the measure in the eighth verse. The eighth verse will leave free the relation with the one who does not fight and does not drive out. Here it is said why the one who drove out did so: fi'd-dīn. The sūra ties the boundary both of the prohibition and of the freedom to the same measure.

The choice of the word رَبِّكُمْ is meaningful too. It could have said "because you believed in God"; it says "in God, your Lord". As was seen in the section on al-Fātiḥa, a rabb is the one who owns and nurtures, who brings up. That is, the sentence implies: because you attached yourselves to the one who nurtures you, they drove you out of the place where you were nurtured.

The length of the verse is a choice of style; the sentence twice breaks its own flow.

The first break — a condition whose apodosis is not spoken:

إِن كُنتُمْ خَرَجْتُمْ جِهَٰدًا فِى سَبِيلِى وَٱبْتِغَآءَ مَرْضَاتِى "If you have gone out to strive in My way and to seek My good pleasure…"

The condition has no apodosis. In Arabic this is a well-known technique of emphasis by way of suppression: the answer is not spoken, because what ought to be said is already evident and its not being said makes it heavier. We speak like this in English too: "If you gave your word…" — the sentence stops there, and the rest is left to the conscience of the one addressed.

On what the answer is, the exegetes agree in this direction: "…then do not take them as allies." That is, the condition is tied back to the prohibition at the beginning.

But the function of the suppression is not emphasis alone. The conditional clause is at the same time a reminder: you went out from somewhere. The other side's driving you out was described a moment ago (yukhrijūna… wa iyyākum); now your own going out is mentioned (kharajtum). The same root, two agents: they drove out, you went out. And your going out had a cause — jihādan fī sabīlī wa'btighāʾa marḍātī.

جِهَاد — the root ج-ه-د: to expend strength, to spend one's capacity, to be put under strain. Jahd — effort. Juhd — strength, capacity. Ijtihād — to expend all one's strength on a question. At the centre of the root stands not war but being put under strain; war is one form of that strain, not the whole of it.

ٱبْتِغَآء — the root ب-غ-ي: to seek, to want. It is interesting that the same root also gives the word baghy (transgression, insolence) — it occurred at al-Baqara 2/90 as baghyan, "out of envy". What is common in the root is an intense wanting; if the direction turns to the good it becomes a search, if to the bad it becomes excess. The iftiʿāl pattern (ibtighāʾ), for its part, states effort and continuity: to go on seeking.

The second break — a repetition:

تُسِرُّونَ إِلَيْهِم بِٱلْمَوَدَّةِ "You convey affection to them in secret."

The sentence is almost the same as the first; the only difference is the change of verb: tulqūna → tusirrūna.

أَسَرَّ — the root س-ر-ر: to hide. From the same root come sirr, sarīra (what is kept within), and — strikingly — surūr (joy); according to the classical explanation the trace of joy appears on the face but its source is within. And this root too is counted among the aḍdād: asarra has been used both for "he hid" and, in some contexts, for "he made known".

The function of the repetition is this: the first sentence described the act, the second adds the character of the act. The same business, but done in secret.

And the secrecy completes the verse's diagnosis. To hide something is the clearest proof of knowing that it ought not to be done. Nobody hides a piece of business he thinks right. The verse does not thereby make the charge heavier; it simply sets out what the person knows himself.

"Yet I know better what you have concealed and what you have made known."

The most striking thing in the word order is here: the address passes to the first person singular. Throughout the verse God had in any case not been mentioned in the third person — ʿaduwwī, sabīlī, marḍātī (My enemy, My way, My good pleasure) — and now the pronoun أَنَا۠ (I) is said outright.

This is an instance of the technique called iltifāt in the Qurʾān (a shift in the direction of address), but its use here is special: the sentence speaks of secrecy, and over against the secrecy is placed God Himself, directly. It does not say "you concealed some things"; it says "I know what you concealed". No one is put in between.

أَخْفَيْتُمْ / أَعْلَنتُمْ — to conceal / to make known. That the two should be mentioned together is a widespread pattern in the Qurʾān, and its function is this: when the scope of knowledge is divided in two and both halves are counted, no area is left outside the scope.

A detail: akhfaytum comes first, aʿlantum after. The order suits the context; the matter in question had been done in secret.

"Whoever among you does this has strayed from the very middle of the way."

سَوَآء — the root س-و-ي: equality, evenness, levelness. Sawā is two things being equal to one another; istiwāʾ is a thing's straightening and becoming even; sawī is what is balanced and without fault.

The construct سَوَآءُ ٱلسَّبِيل means "the middle of the road, the line that runs down its very centre" — not the edge of the road but its central line.

The choice of this construct makes the sentence heavier. It does not say "he left the road"; it says "he missed the middle of the road". The difference is this: the person who misses the middle of the road is not yet outside the road; but he has departed from the centre, and the line he is on will take him outside.

This is a caveat that must be kept in mind while reading the severity of the sūra. The verse does not throw the people it describes outside the circle of faith. The address is in any case "O you who believe", and that address is not withdrawn at the end of the verse. What is said is a grave wrong done by a believer — not a declaration of leaving the religion.

Indeed the outcome of the event transmitted also suits this reading: the person was not punished.

فَقَدْ — the fāʾ enters upon the apodosis of the condition, and qad, together with a perfect verb, states certainty. That is, the consequence is laid down not as a possibility but as a ruling that has come about.

First: when a weakness is given its right name. What the verse takes as its target is not an ideological deviation; it is a very familiar human mechanism — carrying a piece of information belonging to the structure you are in outside it, in order to secure your own people. Today's counterparts of this can be multiplied: leaking information from an institution to a relative, using a sphere of responsibility for the continuance of personal relationships. What is striking about the verse is that it ties this behaviour not to bad intention but to a good feeling. It is easy to guard against bad intention; it is hard to guard against a good feeling flowing to the wrong place.

Second: the price of failing to tell two things apart. The distinction set up above — walāya and affection — collapses easily today too. A community may make the placing of emotional distance between itself and everyone outside into a measure of loyalty; or, the other way round, may count emotional closeness a boundless licence to change sides. The sūra cuts off both. The line of the distinction lies not in feeling but in whose affairs are being conducted by whom.

Third: secrecy is itself a diagnosis. The caveat the verse adds to the act by saying tusirrūna works today as well as a moral test: the simplest way of learning whether you are sure of the rightness of what you are doing is to look at whom you are hiding it from.

In yathqafūkum yakūnū lakum aʿdāʾan wa yabsuṭū ilaykum aydiyahum wa alsinatahum bi's-sūʾi wa waddū law takfurūn

"If they get you into their power they will be enemies to you; they will stretch out their hands and their tongues against you with evil, and they will wish that you should return to unbelief."

The first verse laid down the prohibition. This verse gives the ground. And the ground is not a description of a belief but a prediction of behaviour: a description of what they will do if they find the opportunity.

This already shows the method of the sūra. Throughout the sūra the measure will always be the deed — in the eighth verse this will be expressed as a principle. Here the negative side of the principle is at work: what is said about this particular group is not what they think but what they will do.

The root ث-ق-ف. The semantic field of the root looks scattered at first sight, but its centre is single: to catch a thing completely, to establish full mastery over it.

• ثَقِفَ الشَّىْءَ — he found and caught a thing, reached it and held it in his hand.
• تَثْقِيف الرُّمْح — to straighten a bent spear by clamping it in a tool. That is, both to grasp and to give shape.
• ثَقِف — a person quick to grasp, clever, capable.
• ثَقَافَة — in present-day Arabic, "culture". This sense of the word settled in the modern period; its link with the "straightening, training, shaping" in the root is plain.

The meaning of the verb here is not "if they meet you" but "if they get you into their hands": that is, a situation in which the upper hand has passed to them.

This caveat is important, because the verse sets up a conditional prediction. They are described not in their present state but in their state when power has come into their hands. The finding that a party's real attitude will be seen only when it has taken power into its own hands is one of the most realistic sentences of the sūra.

بَسَطَ — the root ب-س-ط: to spread, to open, to stretch out. From the same root come bisāṭ (a spread mat), basīṭ (spread out, simple), basṭ al-yad (the opening of the hand — used in the Qurʾān both for generosity and for violence).

The verb itself is neutral; what settles its direction is the caveat at the end: بِٱلسُّوٓءِ — "with evil". The same verb occurs positively in the Qurʾān as well: "do not open your hand altogether" (al-Isrāʾ 17/29) — there it is a matter of spending.

Hand and tongue are named together. The mention of this pair covers the two forms of harm: deed and word. By placing the second beside the first, the verse puts harm done by speech into the same sentence as harm done in fact.

And the order is striking: the hand first, the tongue after. As a classical observation this can be said: the stretching out of the hand requires a set of conditions (nearness, power, opportunity); the stretching out of the tongue requires no condition at all. For this reason the stretching out of the tongue is more widespread and more continuous. The verse does not equate the two, but it counts both.

سُوٓء — the root س-و-أ: to be bad, to become ugly. From the same root come sayyiʾa (an evil deed) and — strikingly — sawʾa (the part that must be covered). At the centre of the root there is the idea of "what is not pleasant to see".

"And they wished that you should return to unbelief."

It was pointed to above at the first verse; here it is completed. The verb وَدُّوا۟ is from the same root as مَوَدَّة in the first verse: و-د-د.

Set the two verses side by side:

That the same root should be used in two verses in two directions is no accident. The sūra is describing an affection that is not returned — and by naming the other side's "wanting" with the same word, it shows into what kind of place the thing the believer sends falls.

And recall the double sense of the root: و-د-د means both "to love" and "to want, to wish". In the first verse the love side of the meaning comes forward, in the second the wanting side. That is, the sūra uses both faces of the word.

لَوْ تَكْفُرُونَ — here the particle law, after the verb wadda, is an established pattern in the Qurʾān and carries the sense "would that…": "would that you returned to unbelief". The verb is imperfect; that is, what is wanted is not an event left in the past but a wish that is going on.

And the content of the wish is striking: they want not to kill you but that you should lose your faith. The verse defines the other side's aim not as physical but as a matter of belief. This definition looks to the same place as the ground given in the first verse (the cause of the driving out: faith). The subject of the conflict has been the same from the start: faith.

Lan tanfaʿakum arḥāmukum wa lā awlādukum, yawma'l-qiyāmati yafṣilu baynakum, wallāhu bimā taʿmalūna baṣīr

"Neither your kin nor your children will profit you. On the Day of Resurrection He will part you from one another. God sees what you do."

This verse goes down into the heart of the event of revelation.

In the event related, the man's ground was not treachery; it was to protect his family. That is, at the source of the offence there lay an anxiety about kin. After describing, in the first two verses, the act and the character of the other side, the sūra in the third verse touches the motive directly: the thing for whose sake you did this will not repay you.

This is a method the Qurʾān often uses: not to be content with forbidding a behaviour, but to break down the calculation that feeds the behaviour.

The root ر-ح-م. And the weight of this root in the Qurʾān is well known: raḥma, al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm come from the same root.

The concrete sense of the word رَحِم is the womb. From this arises the sense "kinship": dhawu'l-arḥām, "those who have wombs" — that is, those who come from the same womb, those bound by blood.

That the root should carry mercy and kinship at once is a strong bond established by the language: the name of mercy has been taken from the first place a human being was sheltered. The Qurʾān uses this bond positively elsewhere — the right of kin, ṣilat al-raḥim, nearness in inheritance.

What, then, is happening here? The verse does not cancel kinship; it cancels kinship's serving as a shield in the hereafter. These are two separate things. The same Qurʾān places doing good to kin within the definition of birr (al-Baqara 2/177: "who gives of his wealth, though he loves it, to kinsfolk…"). That is, kinship stands where it was as a source of obligation; what is removed is its use as a guarantee.

This verse is another face of a principle established in Sūrat al-Baqara.

At al-Baqara 2/124 Abraham had asked that the leadership given to him should continue among his descendants as well, and the answer came: "My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers." As was treated in that section, what was cut there was the line's forming a guarantee downwards: to be the child of a prophet gives rise to no status.

What is cut here is the other direction of the same bond: arḥām (upward and sideways — the blood tie) and awlād (downward — children). The two words together cover everyone to whom a person is tied by blood.

And now look at the fourth verse: there Abraham's relation with his father will come up. That is, the sūra takes up both directions of the blood tie in turn: in the third verse it lays down the principle, in the fourth it gives the example.

فَصَلَ — the root ف-ص-ل: to separate, to sever one from another, to put a distance between. From the same root come faṣl (a section — a separated part of a text), fāṣila (an interval), mafṣal (a joint — the place where two bones are separated), faṣīla (family, the nearest line — the part separated off from a whole). And al-faṣl also means to give judgement: a judgement is the separating of the one in the right from the one in the wrong. The Qurʾān calls the Day of Resurrection yawm al-faṣl (al-Ṣāffāt 37/21, al-Dukhān 44/40 and other places).

The choice of the word is especially apt in this verse. For a raḥim is a bond that joins; faṣl is to separate. In order to say that what joins in this world will separate in the hereafter, the verse chooses precisely the word that is the opposite of joining.

Variant readings are transmitted concerning the subject and the pattern of the verb — whether it is to be read active or passive, in the three-letter form or the doubled form. Because I am not sure to which imāms these differences are ascribed, I give no names. In terms of meaning the upshot of the difference is this: on the active reading the one who separates is plainly God; on the passive reading the act of separating is told without the agent being named, and the agent is in any case clear from the context. On the doubled reading the separating becomes detailed — that is, not a single cut but everyone's being separated from everyone else one by one.

A detail of word order: the position in the sentence of the adverbial yawma'l-qiyāmati has been disputed — whether it attaches to the preceding clause ("they will not profit you on the Day of Resurrection") or to the following one ("on the Day of Resurrection He will part you"). The marks of pause in the muṣḥaf carry the trace of this discussion. Both attachments bring the meaning to largely the same place; for this reason I adopt no preference here.

بَصِير — the root ب-ص-ر: to see; but in Arabic this root states not only the seeing of the eye but also apprehension, discernment. Baṣīra is seeing not with the eye but with the understanding. In the Qurʾān it is said of a person that "man is a baṣīr against his own self" (al-Qiyāma 75/14) — that is, he knows his own condition.

The link of the sentence with the first verse is plain. There it was said "I know both what you conceal and what you make known"; here the same thing is repeated in the language of seeing, with baṣīr. The block closes where it opened.

And a point of word order: bimā taʿmalūna (what you do) has been brought forward in the sentence. The normal order would be "wallāhu baṣīrun bimā taʿmalūn". Bringing a word forward states, in Arabic, specification and the drawing of attention: what is looked at is what you do. Not a declaration of belief, not a statement of intention — deed.

This emphasis is not accidental. The sūra was defining the other side too by its deeds (verse 2: what they will do if they get the upper hand). Now it lays the same measure on its own side. The principle of the eighth verse is thus prepared from both sides.

Qad kānat lakum uswatun ḥasanatun fī Ibrāhīma wa'lladhīna maʿah, idh qālū li-qawmihim innā buraʾāʾu minkum wa mimmā taʿbudūna min dūnillāhi kafarnā bikum wa badā baynanā wa baynakumu'l-ʿadāwatu wa'l-baghḍāʾu abadan ḥattā tuʾminū billāhi waḥdah, illā qawla Ibrāhīma li-abīhi la-astaghfiranna laka wa mā amliku laka minallāhi min shayʾ, rabbanā ʿalayka tawakkalnā wa ilayka anabnā wa ilayka'l-maṣīr

"In Abraham (Ibrāhīm) and those with him there is a good example for you. They said to their people: 'We have nothing to do with you, nor with what you serve apart from God; we do not acknowledge you. Between us and you there has begun an enmity and a hatred that will last until you believe in God alone.' Except for Abraham's saying to his father: 'I shall certainly ask forgiveness for you; but against God I can do nothing at all for you.' 'Our Lord! In You we have put our trust, to You we have turned; and to You is the journey's end.'"

The sūra is establishing a law of relationship, and it chooses a prophet as its support. The reason for the choice is Abraham's position in the Qurʾān: the man who parted from his forefathers and founded a way.

Abraham was treated in detail at al-Baqara 2/124-129; two points from there serve directly here:

• "My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers" (2/124): lineage is not a guarantee.
• Abraham's prayers (2/126-129): his eye is not on himself but on those who will come after.

What is added here is the application of the same principle upwards: Abraham does not only learn that his line is no guarantee for him; he also parts from his own father. The principle works in both directions.

And this is the direct continuation of the third verse. There it was said: your kin will not profit you. What is said here is: if you want to see how this is to be done, look.

One of the key words of the sūra, and a word part of which is lost when it is rendered simply as "example".

The root is أ-س-و. And the concrete sense of the root is unexpected: to heal a wound, to treat it.

• أَسَا الجُرْحَ — he treated the wound, he bound it up.
• الآسِي — a physician, one who binds wounds.
• الأُسْوَة / الإِسْوَة — that by looking at which consolation is found, whose state one aspires to.
• المُوَاسَاة (muwāsāt) — to share someone's trouble, to give him a portion of what one has. From the same root.

The bond between these two branches of the root — healing and being an example — is this: in Arabic, the way to console someone is to show him another like himself. To say "you are not alone" is what binds the wound. For this reason an uswa is not merely a "model to be copied"; it is the consolation given by seeing someone who has already walked the same road.

This changes the emotional weight of the verse. Those addressed have to do something hard: to put a distance between themselves and their own kin. The verse does not merely give them a rule; it shows them someone who has already done it.

حَسَنَة — the root ح-س-ن: to be beautiful. The adjective may look unnecessary — an example is an example already. But the Qurʾān could have used the word uswa for a bad example too; the word itself is in fact neutral. The caveat ḥasana says separately that this is an example worth following.

The construct uswa ḥasana occurs in three places in the Qurʾān: al-Aḥzāb 33/21 (of the Prophet), and twice in this sūra — 60/4 and 60/6 (of Abraham and those with him). That is, two of the three occurrences of the construct are in this sūra. Short as it is, the sūra is the centre of the Qurʾān's word for "being an example".

وَٱلَّذِينَ مَعَهُۥ — "and those with him". Abraham is not mentioned alone. This detail will become still more marked in the sixth verse (fīhim — "in them"). The example is not a person but a community; because what is asked for is likewise the attitude of a community.

The root ب-ر-أ. Its concrete sense: to be rid of a thing, to get free of it and be separated from it.

• بَرِئَ مِنَ المَرَضِ — he recovered from the illness, he got well.
• بَرِئَ مِنَ الدَّيْن — he was quit of the debt, his connection with it was cut.
• البَارِئ — one of the names of God: the one who separates the created out of nothingness and brings it forth.
• بَرَاءَة — the cutting of one's connection, keeping away; and, in a document, acquittal.

بُرَآء (the plural of barīʾ) — "we are quit of you, we have cut our connection with you".

And here there is a link with Sūrat al-Kāfirūn. One of that sūra's names in the tradition is al-Barāʾa, and the reason is that the sūra is counted a text of cutting one's connection. In the section on al-Kāfirūn the source of this name and what the sūra cuts its connection with were treated: cutting one's connection with partnership in service, not cutting one's connection with people.

The same distinction holds here, and the text itself shows it. Look at the sentence:

إِنَّا بُرَءَٰٓؤُا۟ مِنكُمْ وَمِمَّا تَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ "We have nothing to do with you, nor with what you serve apart from God."

Connection is cut with two things: with persons and with what they serve. The second is plain. And the first? If the cutting of connection had been directed at belief alone, it would have been enough to say "we have nothing to do with what you serve". That the persons too should be counted shows that the separation is not merely a mental classification but an actual separation of position.

But — and this is critical — what this barāʾa is not, the sūra itself will say four verses later: the eighth verse will plainly leave free the relation of doing good and dealing justly with those who do not fight and do not drive out. That is, the barāʾa here does not mean the cutting off of every kind of dealing with people.

An unusual usage. The object of the pattern kafara bi- in the Qurʾān is generally a belief, a verse, a favour: "they denied Our verses", "he denied God". Here the object is persons.

Recall the meaning of the root — as was treated at al-Baqara 2/6, ك-ف-ر is to cover: to cover what is known, to refuse to acknowledge. Then kafarnā bikum means "we do not acknowledge you, we refuse that we have any bond with you". In the language of a tribal order the force of this is heavy: for a community to reject one of its own members is to leave him without protection.

The Qurʾān uses the same structure in another place, in the hereafter, on the tongue of Satan: "I reject your having associated me before (kafartu bimā ashraktumūni min qabl)" (Ibrāhīm 14/22).

In English both can be rendered "enmity"; but they are two different things.

• عَدَاوَة — as seen above, from the root ع-د-و: overstepping the limit, turning in deed against the other party. That is, an opposition at the level of behaviour.
• بَغْضَاء — the root ب-غ-ض: detestation, a dislike that comes from within, hatred. The opposite of love (ḥubb). That is, an opposition at the level of feeling.

That the two should be named together states that the separation is both in deed and within. And that the word baghḍāʾ should come on the faʿlāʾ pattern states in Arabic intensiveness and diffusion: a dislike scattered abroad, seeped into everything.

But now the real matter comes.

وَبَدَا بَيْنَنَا وَبَيْنَكُمُ ٱلْعَدَٰوَةُ وَٱلْبَغْضَآءُ أَبَدًا حَتَّىٰ تُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ وَحْدَهُۥٓ "Between us and you there has begun an everlasting enmity and hatred, until you believe in God alone."

Two words stand side by side and at first sight seem to consume one another: أَبَدًا (for ever, always) and حَتَّىٰ (until…).

Can a thing be both everlasting and bounded by a limit?

It can — if "for ever" qualifies not the time but the continuance of the condition. The logic of the sentence is this: this enmity has in itself no date of ending; it does not finish by wearing away, by being forgotten, by softening with time. The only thing that will end it is the disappearance of its cause.

That is, abadan says this: this is no passing quarrel. And ḥattā says this: but it is no fate either.

And note what is set as the limit: it is not a submission, a defeat, an indemnity: ḥattā tuʾminū billāhi waḥdah — "until you believe in God alone". That is, whatever the subject of the separation is, the condition for the separation's ending is the same thing. The quarrel ends with what it began with.

This caveat already prepares the seventh verse. The sentence that will come three verses later — "Perhaps God will put an affection between you" — enters by the door which this ḥattā has left open. The sūra has thus put a caveat on its own "for ever", within itself.

بَدَا — the root ب-د-و: to come out, to become visible. From the same root come bādiya (the desert — the place that lies open) and badawī (one who lives in the open). The choice of verb is meaningful: the enmity was not invented but became visible. That is, the separation was there already; it came out when it was declared.

"Except for Abraham's saying to his father, 'I shall certainly ask forgiveness for you.'"

The most discussed place in the verse.

First let us look at what the exception attaches to. Three verses back an uswa (example) had been laid down; then the content of that example was described; now an exception comes. In the classical exegesis there are two analyses:

The first view is the widespread one and is supported by the sixth verse: there, when the expression of exemplarity is repeated, no exception is laid down — that is, the exception is a caveat belonging to the exemplarity of the fourth verse.

But why is it not taken as an example? The Qurʾān itself gives the answer plainly in another place:

"Abraham's asking forgiveness for his father was only on account of a promise he had made to him. When it became clear to him that he was an enemy of God, he dissociated himself from him. Abraham was indeed tender-hearted and forbearing." (al-Tawba 9/114)

This verse says three things, and all three explain the exception:

1. The asking of forgiveness arose from a promise. Abraham had given his father his word (this word is recorded at Maryam 19/47: "I shall ask my Lord to forgive you"). That is, what he did was not an arbitrary act of closeness but the fulfilling of a word given. 2. And it came to an end. When the situation became clear Abraham withdrew. That is, the exception is not a lasting attitude but a period of transition. 3. Its cause is character. Awwāh and ḥalīm — tender-hearted and forbearing. That is, the asking of forgiveness is not a mistake but the overflowing of a mercy.

Now the meaning of the exception becomes clear. What is to be taken as an example is the clarity in cutting the connection. What is not to be taken as an example is asking a guarantee for the hereafter on behalf of someone whose position has been settled.

The difference is fine but real: to wish someone well is one thing; to ask God for the opposite of a position on which judgement has been given is another. The Qurʾān does not forbid the first; it puts the second outside exemplarity.

And now the finest place in the verse. Abraham's sentence does not end there:

"I shall certainly ask forgiveness for you — but against God I can do nothing at all for you."

That is, as the promise is given its limit is stated too. Abraham does not give his father a guarantee; he states an intention, and in the same sentence records that this intention has no authority to produce a result.

أَمْلِكُ — the root م-ل-ك: to own, to hold in one's hand, to have the power of disposal. Mulk, malik, mālik are from the same root. That is, "it is not in my hand, I have no authority".

This caveat softens the exception of the verse too. Abraham's word is a word that draws its own limit. And the Qurʾān sets up this sentence for prophets in other places as well: "Say: if God wills harm for you, I possess nothing for you against Him" (a pattern like al-Fatḥ 48/11; also al-Jinn 72/21).

رَّبَّنَا عَلَيْكَ تَوَكَّلْنَا وَإِلَيْكَ أَنَبْنَا وَإِلَيْكَ ٱلْمَصِيرُ "Our Lord! In You we have put our trust, to You we have turned; and to You is the journey's end."

Immediately after a hard declaration of separation comes a prayer. This ordering is no accident.

To cut a bond leaves a person in a void. Every relation severed is a loss of security — and in a tribal order kinship is especially a condition of staying alive. The prayer says with what that void is to be filled.

تَوَكَّلْنَا — the root و-ك-ل: to refer a matter to someone, to appoint him as deputy. And note: this root is a neighbour, in its semantic field, of the root و-ل-ي that forms the backbone of the sūra. A walī too is the party by whom you have your business done, against whom you lean your back. The verse says in exactly this language what is to be put in the place of the walāya that has been cut: in parting from one, one leans on another.

أَنَبْنَا — the root ن-و-ب: to return, to come in turn. Ināba is to return again and again; nāʾiba (a calamity — that which comes round) and nawba are from the same root. That is, the turning is not a single act but a direction to which one returns and returns.

ٱلْمَصِير — the root ص-ي-ر: to turn into a state, to arrive. Maṣīr is the place arrived at. The word is the noun of the verb ṣāra, and that verb in Arabic means "to become something, to come to a state". That is, maṣīr is not merely "the place one goes to" but the place of what one will become.

Three words together draw a map of direction: to lean (now), to turn (the process), to arrive (the end).

Rabbanā lā tajʿalnā fitnatan lilladhīna kafarū, wa'ghfir lanā rabbanā, innaka anta'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm

"Our Lord! Do not make us a fitna for those who disbelieve. And forgive us, our Lord. You are indeed al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥakīm."

This verse is the continuation of the prayer at the end of the fourth verse — and this matters for the word order. That is, the prayer that follows the declaration of separation is not a single sentence; it runs on for two verses. After the severity, the sūra lengthens the prayer.

The root ف-ت-ن. And its concrete sense explains all the uses of the word: to put gold into the fire and separate it from what is mixed with it.

• فَتَنَ الذَّهَبَ — he threw the gold into the fire; when it is melted the pure is separated from the alloyed.
• الفَتِين — burnt, blackened stony ground.

From here all the senses of the word are derived: trial (the thing that distinguishes), torment (casting into fire — indeed the Qurʾān says to those in the Fire "taste your fitna", al-Dhāriyāt 51/14), turmoil (the thing that splits a community apart), and the attractive thing that leads astray (the pull that divides a person).

The usual English renderings show the same narrowing: "sedition", "strife", "temptation" each take one slice of it. The use in the Qurʾān is far wider, and at its centre stands a trial that separates.

What, then, does "do not make us a fitna for those who disbelieve" mean? In the classical exegesis there are two readings, and both can be defended:

The second reading seems to me the stronger, and my ground is this: the prayer is about the situation of the other side — it says "a fitna for them", not "a fitna for us". That is, the subject of the prayer is not so much what befalls the believers as what what befalls them will produce on the other side.

This is a preference, and it is not binding; and the two readings do not exclude one another — the first coming about leads in any case to the second.

The idea carried by the second reading is worth noting: the condition of a community is, for the other side, either a proof or an obstacle. To be defeated, to fall apart, to become inconsistent does not harm oneself alone; it also strengthens the other side's hand. That is, the believer is held responsible for his own condition on behalf of another's belief as well. This is a sentence of responsibility built by way of a prayer.

The same idea is seen elsewhere in the Qurʾān too. The people of Moses (Mūsā) say "Our Lord, do not make us a fitna for the wrongdoing people" (Yūnus 10/85) — the same pattern, the same word.

عَزِيز — the root ع-ز-ز: to be firm, hard, difficult of access. Its concrete sense is hard ground that does not give way when trodden on (arḍun ʿazāz). From this come the senses "unconquerable, superior, precious". For a thing to be ʿazīz is for it not to be easily reached — and English keeps the same link in the word dear, which means both "beloved" and "costly".

حَكِيم — the root ح-ك-م: to prevent, to bridle. The bit put in a horse's mouth is called ḥakama. From the same root come ḥukm (a decision that binds a matter), ḥikma (knowledge that holds one back from error), iḥkām (making firm). That is, ḥikma, in the logic of the word itself, is not an accumulation of knowledge but an understanding that holds one back from doing wrong.

That these two names should come at the end of this prayer is meaningful. al-ʿAzīz: the power is Yours. al-Ḥakīm: and there is a measure in the way that power is used. At the moment a community feels itself defenceless, the first name tells it of security, the second that what befalls it is not random.

Laqad kāna lakum fīhim uswatun ḥasanatun li-man kāna yarjullāha wa'l-yawma'l-ākhir, wa man yatawalla fa-innallāha huwa'l-Ghaniyyu'l-Ḥamīd

"Assuredly, in them there is for you — for whoever hopes in God and the Last Day — a good example. And whoever turns away: God is indeed the Self-sufficient, the One worthy of praise."

The same expression comes back two verses later. In the Qurʾān a repetition as close as this is striking, and it always has work to do. Let us list the differences:

The differences form a system:

First: reinforcement. Laqad (lām + qad) together with a perfect verb is in Arabic a reinforcement with the force of an oath. The second occurrence is more insistent.

Second: the exception is removed. The exception laid down in verse four is not repeated here. This supports the analysis given above: the exception was a caveat belonging to the content of the exemplarity, and once that caveat has been laid down there is no need to repeat it. What remains in the second occurrence is the exemplarity itself.

Third — and most important: a condition is added.

لِّمَن كَانَ يَرْجُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَٱلْيَوْمَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَ "For whoever hopes in God and the Last Day."

That is, the exemplarity does not work for everyone. What Abraham did — to part from his own people, from his own father — is not meaningful on a worldly reckoning. A person leaves the security afforded by his kin only on account of another security. If that reckoning is absent, the example ceases to be an example and becomes merely a story.

رَجَا — the root ر-ج-و: to hope, to expect. And the root has an interesting secondary sense: rajā also means the edge of a well or of a thing (arjāʾ — the edges; it occurs in the Qurʾān at al-Ḥāqqa 69/17). The bond between the two branches of the root is this: hope is standing at the edge of something you are not yet inside.

And the choice of the verb yarjū is striking too: it does not say "for the person who believes", it says "for the person who hopes". Hope is something different from faith; it is faith turned into a state. A person may say that he believes in something and yet expect nothing from it. The verse ties exemplarity to the second.

يَتَوَلَّ — the same root as the أَوْلِيَآء of the first verse: و-ل-ي.

This is the second knot in the backbone of the sūra. In the first verse the root had occurred not in the tafaʿʿul but in the iftiʿāl pattern ("to take as allies"); here it comes in the pattern تَوَلَّى and — as was seen above — this pattern runs both ways: to turn towards and to turn one's back.

Here the meaning is the second: to turn away. That is, to reject the example, to turn one's back.

And in the ninth verse the same pattern will come, this time in the first meaning: an tawallawhum — "that you should take them as allies". By using the same word in two different directions the sūra is in fact saying one thing: to turn towards one direction is to turn one's back on the other. This is why the word is counted among the aḍdād; both senses are two faces of a single movement.

The map of the root و-ل-ي in the sūra is this:

Four verses, one root. The sūra lays down its prohibition four times, always with the same root — and in none of them does it make the root of mawadda the object of the prohibition. This is the in-text proof of the distinction established at the first verse.

غَنِىّ — the root غ-ن-ي: to be without need, to be sufficient to oneself. Its concrete use: ghaniya bi'l-makān — he stayed in a place, he had no need to leave it. From the same root come ghinā (wealth) and istighnāʾ (to count oneself sufficient). The centre of the root is not "wealth" but needlessness; wealth is a consequence of it.

حَمِيد — the root ح-م-د. This root was analysed in detail in the section on al-Fātiḥa: ḥamd is not commendation (madḥ, which is done for involuntary things too), nor is it thanks (shukr, which depends on a favour reaching you); it is a word between the two, directed at a beauty brought about by will and not requiring that the favour should have reached you. And, as was recorded there, Ḥamīd is both the one who praises and the one worthy of praise.

That the two should come together is exactly right here. The context of the sentence is this: what happens if someone turns away? The answer is not a threat but a definition: God is ghanī — He has no need of your turning to Him; and He is ḥamīd — even if you do not praise Him, His worthiness of praise is not diminished.

That is, the verse does not say to the one who turns away, "you have lost God". It says "God has lost nothing". The difference between the two is on which side the loss lies.

This sentence-pattern is established in the Qurʾān: "And whoever is ungrateful — God is indeed Self-sufficient, worthy of praise" (Luqmān 31/12); "If you and everyone on earth were ungrateful, God is Self-sufficient, worthy of praise" (Ibrāhīm 14/8).

ʿAsallāhu an yajʿala baynakum wa bayna'lladhīna ʿādaytum minhum mawaddah, wallāhu Qadīr, wallāhu Ghafūrun Raḥīm

"Perhaps God will put an affection between you and those of them with whom you are at enmity. God is powerful. God is forgiving, merciful."

This verse is the most important structural move of the sūra, and without reading it the sūra is taken for a "text of enmity".

Recall the sequence:

• Verse 1: Do not take the enemy as allies — you are conveying mawadda to them.
• Verse 2: If they get the upper hand they will harm you; they wish you to return to unbelief.
• Verse 4: Abraham's word to his people: between us there has begun an everlasting enmity and hatred.
• Verse 7: Perhaps God will put a mawadda between you.

That is, three verses after setting up its hardest sentence the sūra brings back the word that sentence forbade — and this time positively, indeed ascribed to God.

This cannot be explained by coincidence. That the same word (mawadda) should occur only twice in the sūra, and that the two occurrences should be in positions as opposed as this, is a deliberate choice of the text.

And this verse settles the reading of the first verse. The distinction set out at length above — that what is forbidden is walāya, not mawadda — would without this verse have been an interpretation. With this verse it becomes an in-text proof. For a text does not present as something God promises what it forbade three verses earlier.

The root ع-س-ي. ʿAsā is in Arabic a defective verb stating hope and drawing near: "it may be, it is to be hoped, almost".

And here there is a question: what does this word mean when it is ascribed to God? Can God's saying "perhaps" be conceived?

In the classical exegesis there is a widespread approach: "an 'ʿasā' coming from God is obligatory/certain" — that is, in divine speech this word arises not from a want of knowledge but from a choice of manner towards the addressee; what is promised comes about. I record this approach as a transmitted report; let me state my own preference separately:

In my view the function of the word here is not so much to state a degree of certainty as to say in whose hand the door lies. Had it said "I shall put affection between you", this would have been a promise with a timetable. When it says ʿasā, what falls to the one addressed is not to wait but not to shut the door. That is, the verse does not give a date; it asks for an attitude.

This is a reading, and it is not binding.

بَيْنَ ٱلَّذِينَ عَادَيْتُم مِّنْهُم "(with) those of them with whom you are at enmity"

The particle مِنْ here states the partitive: a part of a whole. That is, not "with all of them" but "with some of them".

This caveat is important in both directions. On the one hand it makes the promise realistic: the text does not say that all enmity will end. On the other hand it recalls the function of the particle min discussed at length in the section on al-Bayyina: when the Qurʾān speaks about a community it frequently uses a particle of division and avoids establishing a wholesale ruling.

Per the method (Method), no wholesale ruling is issued about a group in this commentary; and here the text itself applies that principle.

قَدِير — the root ق-د-ر: to measure, to assign a quantity, to have power over. From the same root come qadar (measure, determination), miqdār, qudra. At the centre of the root there is not sheer power but power used with measure.

That this name should come at the end of the verse has a direct bearing on the content of the sentence. What is promised is not an event in the outer world but a change within people. The passage from enmity to affection is something no one can produce by planning. This is why the verse closes with a name of power: this is not a piece of work you can do.

The Qurʾān says the same thought plainly in another place: "He knit their hearts together. Had you spent everything on earth you could not have knit their hearts together; but God knit them together" (al-Anfāl 8/63). There too the matter is the inner world, and there too the insufficiency of wealth is emphasised.

These two names at the close are attached in the commentaries to two different addresses, and both agree with the text:

The two do not exclude one another. And read together, the verse establishes this: the door is open both inside and outside.

That a short while after the period in which the sūra came down, with the conquest of Mecca, the enmity that is the subject of this verse largely came to an end is a matter of historical record. As was stated in the section on al-Kāfirūn too, a significant portion of the addressees of that sūra passed a short while later outside the scope of the address.

I record this not as a claim that "the verse was fulfilled" but as a caution about how the sūra is to be read: for the addressees of the verse the description "enemy" was not a permanent identity, and in fact it did not turn out to be permanent.

The idea that enmity is not ontological. The most important thing this verse carries is this: a conflict does not arise from something present in the essence of one of the parties. Enmity is a position, not a nature. Positions can change.

This distinction is decisive in practice. A community that defines the other side as a nature makes peace conceptually impossible, because a nature does not change. A community that defines it as a position, on the other hand, leaves a way out even while the conflict continues.

And there is a balance that must be noticed: the verse does not deny that the enmity exists at present. The first and second verses stand where they were. That is, the text builds hope not by belittling the threat but by limiting the threat's duration. This is a third attitude, different both from pure optimism and from pure enmity.

Lā yanhākumullāhu ʿani'lladhīna lam yuqātilūkum fi'd-dīni wa lam yukhrijūkum min diyārikum an tabarrūhum wa tuqsiṭū ilayhim, innallāha yuḥibbu'l-muqsiṭīn

"God does not forbid you to do good to those who have not fought you over religion and have not driven you from your homes, nor to deal justly with them. Indeed God loves those who deal justly."

It is the most important verse of the sūra, and its function is this: to narrow the scope of the first verse.

The first verse had laid down a prohibition. When a prohibition is laid down, a question inevitably arises in the one addressed: how far does this prohibition go? Does it cover everyone outside? Is a community to keep its distance even from people with whom it has no quarrel at all?

The eighth verse answers this question. And in giving the answer it chooses a word which by itself shows how wide the answer is: birr.

This verse was treated together with 60/9 in the section on al-Kāfirūn, and the division of labour between the two sūras was given there in a table: al-Kāfirūn draws the boundary of belief, al-Mumtaḥana 8-9 the boundary of relationship. I do not repeat that comparison here; the reader should look there. What I shall do here is different: to go down to the level of the verse's words and word order.

The sentence is built thus: لَّا يَنْهَىٰكُمُ ٱللَّهُ — "God does not forbid you".

This is a construction to be looked at carefully. The verse does not say "do good"; it says "doing good has not been forbidden to you". Not the imperative, but the negating of a prohibition.

Why is it built this way? Because what had arisen in those addressed was a hesitation, not an unwillingness. People already want to do good; what they are asking is whether it is permitted. The verse answers the question asked in the form in which it was asked.

And this construction has one further consequence: the sentence attaches directly to the first verse. The subject of the verb "does not forbid" is the same as the one who laid down the prohibition in the first verse. That is, the eighth verse marks out the area the first verse left outside: the same authority is drawing the boundary of its own prohibition.

نَهَى — the root ن-ه-ي: end, extremity, limit. From the same root come nihāya (an end), muntahā (the furthest point reached), and — strikingly — nuhā (reason; its plural occurs in the Qurʾān as ūli'n-nuhā, Ṭāhā 20/54). That reason should be given this name is the very logic seen for the root ʿ-q-l at al-Baqara 2/44: reason is what stops a person. An ʿiqāl binds the camel; nuhya halts one at the limit.

That is, a nahy is the setting of a limit. And this verse says how far that limit goes. The word itself says what the business is: the drawing of a boundary.

The most important sentence of the sūra is here, and it must be dwelt upon in detail.

In saying to whom doing good and dealing justly are free, the verse uses a definition. Look carefully at that definition:

ٱلَّذِينَ لَمْ يُقَٰتِلُوكُمْ فِى ٱلدِّينِ وَلَمْ يُخْرِجُوكُم مِّن دِيَٰرِكُمْ "Those who have not fought you over religion and have not driven you from your homes"

In the definition there are two deeds and no caveat about belief at all.

The verse does not say:

• "to those who believe" — it does not say.
• "to those who are of the People of the Book" — it does not say.
• "to those who treat you well" — it does not say.
• "to those who are of you" — it does not say.

The verse does not ask at all what the other party believes. It asks only what he has done. And the two things it asks are both concrete, ascertainable deeds not open to dispute: did he fight you, did he drive you from your home.

The consequence of this is: being outside Islam is not a ground for being placed outside kindness and justice. The ground is actual hostility. Difference of belief and hostility are established in this verse as two separate categories, and they do not stand in for one another.

To see how sharp this distinction is, consider how the verse could have been built. It could have said, "God does not forbid you to do good to those unbelievers who do you no harm" — and then a caveat about belief would have been present inside the measure. It does not say this. In the sentence there is not one word about the belief of those addressed; there is only what they have not done.

And the ninth verse repeats the same measure from the reverse direction. When the prohibition is laid down, the same two deeds are counted (and a third is added). That is, the measure is the same on the side of the freedom and on the side of the prohibition. The two verses are two faces of a single measure.

The caveat فِى ٱلدِّينِ. A caveat has been placed on the verb "to fight": fi'd-dīn — "over religion, on account of religion". There are two readings of this caveat: (a) the cause of the fighting must be religion; (b) fī here does not state cause but specifies the subject of the fighting. Both readings bring the measure to the same place: what is meant is a hostility carried on because of religion. The verse takes as its measure not every kind of conflict but the conflict carried on on account of religion.

And now the most striking choice of word in the verse.

The root ب-ر-ر. This root was analysed at al-Baqara 2/44: its primary sense is breadth; from the same root comes barr — dry land, that is, the broad expanse over against the sea. Birr, in the logic of the word itself, is the opposite of narrowness.

And at al-Baqara 2/177 the definition the Qurʾān gives this word was seen: birr is not a ceremony but a sum of behaviours — faith, giving of wealth, prayer, alms, keeping one's word, patience.

Now the real matter: where is this word used in the Qurʾān?

The highest obligation the Qurʾān attaches to the root birr is doing good to one's parents. The Qurʾān says on the tongue of Jesus (ʿĪsā) "He has made me barr towards my mother" (Maryam 19/32); of John (Yaḥyā) it says "he was barr to his parents" (Maryam 19/14). This usage has settled as a fixed expression: birr al-wālidayn.

That is, in describing the attitude to be taken towards people outside, the verse chooses the warmest, the most loaded, the most intimate word in the language. It does not say "do them no harm". It does not say "get along with them". It does not say "observe their legal rights". It says "do good to them" — and with the very word used for one's mother and father.

This choice by itself shows the scope of the verse. And what it shows is this: what the text opens here is not a minimal tolerance but an area of positive closeness.

And recall the root sense of the word: birr is breadth. And this is exactly the business of the eighth verse — to widen the area the first verse narrowed. Word and function overlap.

The root ق-س-ط. This root was analysed in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Jinn, and was treated there as the cleanest example of the Arabic matter of the aḍdād. Its summary is this:

• قَسَطَ (three-letter form) — he swerved from the right, he spoiled the share, he wronged. From this root comes qāsiṭ (al-Jinn 72/14-15).
• أَقْسَطَ (ifʿāl) — he dealt justly. From this root comes muqsiṭ.
• The difference between them is the privative hamza: the ifʿāl pattern removes the sense of the root. Qasaṭa = he spoiled the share → aqsaṭa = he removed the spoiling → he dealt justly.

The verb in the verse, تُقْسِطُوا۟, is of the ifʿāl pattern. That is, what is asked, in the logic of the word itself, is this: to remove the spoiling in the share between you. Justice here is not a favour but a work of repair; the putting back of what has been disturbed.

And, as was recorded in the section on al-Jinn, the expression "God loves those who deal justly" occurs in several places in the Qurʾān — al-Māʾida 5/42, al-Ḥujurāt 49/9 and this verse. The table given there is thereby completed.

إِلَيْهِمْ — a particle that must be dwelt upon.

The verb aqsaṭa is normally used with إِلَى, and so it is in this verse: tuqsiṭū ilayhim — "deal justly towards them".

The ilā here is a particle of direction: a thing's flowing towards a place. That is, justice is described not as a cold balance standing between the parties but as something going towards them. In the sentence justice has a direction, and that direction is the other side.

The order of the two verbs is meaningful too: birr first, qisṭ after.

This order may look backwards at first sight. Logically one would expect first justice (the minimum obligation) and then doing good (what is over and above). The verse does the reverse.

Two explanations can be given, and both are my own reading, not a transmitted report:

First: The order has to do with the function of the verse. The verse is not setting up a minimum order; it is removing a hesitation. And what is hesitated over is not justice — no one asks "may I wrong someone" — but closeness. The verse goes straight to the subject of the hesitation.

Second: Birr is voluntary, qisṭ is a debt. By counting the voluntary first, the verse implies that the obligatory has long since been granted. That is, the sentence says: if even doing good is free, justice is not a matter of discussion at all.

The close of the verse carries the sentence to an altogether different place.

A sentence of ruling could have closed thus: "God commands justice." Or: "God does not love wrongdoers." Both of these exist in the Qurʾān.

The sentence built here is different: يُحِبُّ — "He loves". And its object is not an act but a type of person: al-muqsiṭīn, those who deal justly.

The consequence of this is: to deal justly with people outside places a person in a position that God loves. That is, this behaviour is entered on the record not as a tolerance, an obligation, a political necessity, but as a virtue.

And note: the subject of the love is not who the other party is but how the one acting acts. The sentence does not say "God loves them"; it says "God loves those who deal justly". The measure is again tied to the deed.

There is this too: in the seventh verse of the sūra mawadda (affection) was something God would bring about; here ḥubb (loving) is something God does. Two verses one after another, two acts of love. This section of the sūra is woven through with words of love — and all of it comes immediately after the first verse.

Some scholars have maintained of this verse that it has been abrogated (that its ruling was later lifted by the verses on fighting). The contrary view holds that the verse is muḥkam, that is, that its ruling remains in force.

In this commentary I find the second view the stronger, and my ground is written in the table above: for a verse to be abrogated, a ruling must come that contradicts it. The eighth verse has already narrowed its own scope; for the area falling outside it lays down no ruling at all.

A similar claim of abrogation was taken up and rejected in the section on al-Kāfirūn; the ground here is structurally the same as the one there. This is a preference, and it is not binding.

Innamā yanhākumullāhu ʿani'lladhīna qātalūkum fi'd-dīni wa akhrajūkum min diyārikum wa ẓāharū ʿalā ikhrājikum an tawallawhum, wa man yatawallahum fa-ulāʾika humu'ẓ-ẓālimūn

"God forbids you only to take as allies those who have fought you over religion, driven you from your homes and backed your being driven out. Whoever takes them as allies — those are the wrongdoers."

The sentence begins with إِنَّمَا. This particle states in Arabic restriction (ḥaṣr): "only, solely, none but".

The consequence of this is the most important feature of the verse: the scope of the prohibition is thereby closed. The eighth verse had said what is not forbidden; the ninth says what is forbidden, and by putting innamā at its head states that the list is closed. Things falling outside it cannot enter the scope of the prohibition.

Set the two verses side by side:

And now attend to the third row of the table. This is the place that lights up the whole sūra.

What is left free in the eighth verse and what is forbidden in the ninth are not the same thing. What is left free: birr and qisṭ. What is forbidden: tawallī.

That is, the two verses are not answering the question "to whom may one behave well and to whom not". They are establishing two separate categories of behaviour:

• Doing good and dealing justly — its measure: the deed of the other party. If he does not fight and does not drive out, it is free.
• Walāya — its measure: again the deed of the other party. If he fights and drives out, it is forbidden.

And the point to attend to: the ninth verse does not leave free the walāya with the group of the eighth verse; it says nothing at all about them. Where the verse is silent one must not speak. But this much is certain: to do good to someone who does not fight and to back someone who does fight are not, in this sūra, parts of the same discussion.

And here the analysis established at the first verse becomes settled.

The forbidden act is stated plainly and on its own: أَن تَوَلَّوْهُمْ — "that you should take them as allies". The root again is و-ل-ي.

In this sentence there is no mawadda. No affection. No feeling. Only walāya.

In the first verse the prohibition had come together with a circumstantial clause (tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati), and that clause described the concrete form of the event. Here the sūra lays its prohibition down again without the circumstantial clause, in its pure state. And its pure state is this: do not take them as allies.

This is the text interpreting itself. Where a ruling is laid down twice and in the second an element drops out, it is understood that the element that dropped out is not an essential part of the ruling.

In the eighth verse there were two deeds; here a third is added.

ظَاهَرَ — the root ظ-ه-ر: the back. From the same root come ẓahr (the back), ẓāhir (what is visible — that which has its front and not its back turned), ẓuhr (noon — the hour at which the day is most distinct).

زَاهَرَ/ظَاهَرَ in the mufāʿala pattern is to set back to back: to back someone, to support him, to lean one's back against him. The English idiom "to back someone" is surprisingly close to the concrete sense of the word.

Why does the adding of this third deed matter? Because it covers one further category: the one who does not do it himself but supports it. He may not have fought, he may not with his own hand have driven anyone out; but he has backed the work of driving out.

The verse thus does not limit responsibility to the agent of the deed. And in doing so it again uses a deed — not an intention, a sympathy, an opinion. Ẓāharū is an observable support.

There is this too: that the root of the word should be "the back" looks to the same place as the notion of walī in the backbone of the sūra. A walī is the party against whom you lean your back; muẓāhara is giving one's back to someone. In describing what it forbids (walāya), the verse names what the other side does among themselves (muẓāhara) with a word from the same semantic field. That is, the matter is a single one: who stands behind whom.

ظَالِم — the root ظ-ل-م: the concrete sense of the root is darkness (ẓulma), and its second sense is to put a thing somewhere other than its place. There is a well-known saying in the Arabic language: "man ashbaha abāhu fa-mā ẓalama" — he who resembles his father has not wronged; that is, he has not put a thing out of its place.

This second sense explains the ruling of the verse directly. Walāya is a position — and the verse calls the giving of that position to the wrong person "wrongdoing". That is, the offence is not an offence of affection but an offence of displacement: in the place of the one who ought to be backed, the other side has been put.

The pattern فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ states in Arabic restriction and specification: "these, precisely these, are the wrongdoers". The repetition of the pronoun (hum) reinforces the ruling.

These two verses are the clearest measure the Qurʾān establishes on the subject of outward relations, and can be summarised thus:

The line of division runs not through belief but through deed.

And this is no ordinary sentence about tolerance; it is important because it lays down an ascertainable measure. A rule that takes belief as its measure produces endless dispute in application: who really believes, whose belief is sound, where the boundaries lie. A rule that takes deed as its measure reduces the question to be asked to two: did he fight you, did he drive you from your home.

There is this too: the measure's lying in deed leaves the measure in the other party's hands. A community determines by its own behaviour how it will be treated. This is the strongest thing the eighth verse quietly establishes.

One last caveat: these two verses must be read together, and if they are separated both are corrupted. If only the eighth verse is read, the warning at the head of the sūra is erased. If only the ninth verse is read, the area the eighth opens is closed. The text has placed the two side by side; the reading must be so as well.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū idhā jāʾakumu'l-muʾminātu muhājirātin fa'mtaḥinūhunn, allāhu aʿlamu bi-īmānihinn, fa-in ʿalimtumūhunna muʾminātin fa-lā tarjiʿūhunna ila'l-kuffār, lā hunna ḥillun lahum wa lā hum yaḥillūna lahunn, wa ātūhum mā anfaqū, wa lā junāḥa ʿalaykum an tankiḥūhunna idhā ātaytumūhunna ujūrahunn, wa lā tumsikū bi-ʿiṣami'l-kawāfiri wa'sʾalū mā anfaqtum wa'l-yasʾalū mā anfaqū, dhālikum ḥukmullāh, yaḥkumu baynakum, wallāhu ʿAlīmun Ḥakīm

"O you who believe! When believing women come to you as emigrants, test them. God knows their faith better. If you find them to be believers, do not send them back to the unbelievers. These women are not lawful for them, nor are they lawful for these women. Give to them (their husbands) what they have spent. There is no fault in you if you marry them, provided you give them their marriage portions. Do not hold to the marriage bonds of unbelieving women; ask for what you have spent, and let them ask for what they have spent. This is God's ruling; He judges between you. God is knowing, wise."

The sūra takes its name from here. And the verse is the place where the sūra passes from its general principles to application: a procedure is described.

As the historical frame of the verse the Treaty of al-Ḥudaybiya is pointed to. It is transmitted that one of the articles of the treaty provided for the return of those who came from Mecca to Medina. On the wording of this article, and on whether it covered women, there are differing reports; in some transmissions it is said that the article concerned men and that women fell outside its scope. On the exact wording of the text I do not speak with certainty. What is certain is that the verse is answering a problem of return; for to say "do not send them back" shows that a demand for return existed.

The root م-ح-ن. In the dictionaries the following are transmitted as the concrete uses of the root: مَحَنَ الأَدِيمَ — to draw out and stretch the hide in tanning, to thin it; and مَحَنَ البِئْرَ — to scrape out a well in order to clean it. What the two uses share is this: to bring out what is inside a thing by working on it.

From here arise the senses miḥna (hardship, trial) and imtiḥān (testing). At the centre of the word there is an operation of bringing to light — and the operation itself is laborious.

That the word should be from this root makes the next sentence of the verse meaningful too: the hide grows thin by being drawn, but whatever is inside it is what comes out. A test produces nothing; it makes visible what is there.

The most noteworthy place in the verse is here, and it is generally passed over quickly.

The command is given: test them. And immediately after the command, without a single word in between, comes a caveat: God knows their faith better.

The meaning of this sequence is: the authority given to you is not the authority to know the heart. Test — but knowing that the result is not absolute. In commanding a procedure the verse draws in the same sentence the epistemological limit of that procedure.

This appears in the verse's next expression too: فَإِنْ عَلِمْتُمُوهُنَّ مُؤْمِنَٰتٍ — "if you know / find them to be believers". Here the verb ʿilm is used not in the sense of absolute knowledge but in the sense of arriving at a conviction; in the classical exegesis this is explained by "strong conviction" (ẓann ghālib). That is, the decision is built not upon certainty but upon the best conviction obtainable.

What is the content of the test? In the classical commentaries it is transmitted that the women were asked the reason for their emigration — whether they had come out of anger at a husband, out of some worldly expectation or some other cause, or really on account of faith. The view is also transmitted that the articles of the pledge in the twelfth verse are the content of this test. I record these transmissions as possibilities; the wording of the verse does not describe a procedure, it only gives the command.

In practice this means: the ruling is built upon outward signs and upon declaration. This agrees with the general attitude of the Qurʾān; indeed at al-Ḥujurāt 49/14, when a community is told "do not say 'we have believed'; say 'we have submitted'", what is being distinguished is exactly the difference between declaration and knowledge of the heart.

"Do not send them back to the unbelievers."

And the ground comes immediately after:

لَا هُنَّ حِلٌّ لَّهُمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحِلُّونَ لَهُنَّ "These women are not lawful for them, nor are they lawful for these women."

A symmetrical sentence. The same ruling is said in both directions. And this is a choice of word order that must be attended to: the sentence could have been built one-directionally ("they are no longer lawful for them"), but it is said separately to both sides.

حِلّ — the root ح-ل-ل: to untie, to loosen a bond. From the same root come ḥall (a solution), ḥulūl (to come down and halt at a place — the traveller's untying of his load), ḥalāl (that whose bond is untied, free). Its opposite is ḥarām, root ح-ر-م: made inviolable, closed off.

That is, "not to be lawful" is not, in the logic of the word itself, the bond's not having been untied; in this context it is the very opposite — the marriage bond's no longer being valid.

The substance of the ruling is this: the emigration has in fact brought the marriage bond to an end. The verse lays this down not as a punishment but as a statement of the situation.

And now the most striking ruling of the verse.

The woman is not sent back. But the marriage portion her husband paid is given back.

The logic of this ruling needs to be seen. The other side is the enemy; the first verses of the sūra speak about them. The woman is not returned to them, because this is a matter of faith. But the financial right stands as a separate category and is paid.

That is, the verse does this: difference of belief does not cancel a financial right.

This is the most concrete application of the principle of qisṭ laid down two verses earlier. In the eighth verse it was said "deal justly towards them"; here a debt that must be paid even to a party in a state of war is entered on the record.

And the ruling is reciprocal:

وَسْـَٔلُوا۟ مَآ أَنفَقْتُمْ وَلْيَسْـَٔلُوا۟ مَآ أَنفَقُوا۟ "Ask for what you have spent, and let them ask for what they have spent."

The two sentences are mirrors of one another. And the particle لْ in the second sentence is the lām of command: "let them ask" — that is, the verse grants the same right to the other side too in the imperative mood.

That a text should grant to the party it has defined as an enemy a right of claim in that party's own favour is worth noting. What the verse establishes here is not the law of one side but an order of settlement between two sides.

"Do not hold to the marriage bonds of unbelieving women."

عِصَم — the plural of ʿiṣma. The root ع-ص-م: to hold on, to cling, to protect. From the same root come iʿtiṣām (to cling fast — Āl ʿImrān 3/103: "hold fast to the rope of God"), maʿṣūm (protected), ʿiṣām (the cord that ties the mouth of a waterskin).

That marriage should be named by this word is worth noting: marriage is here mentioned as a handhold, a bond, a point of clinging. The concrete sense of the word — the cord that ties the mouth of a thing — also shows the function of the bond: what holds in what is inside.

The ruling is the symmetry of the preceding sentence. There the woman who came was not given back; here it is said that the bond going in the reverse direction is not to be held to either. That is, the regulation is not one-directional.

حَكَمَ — the root ح-ك-م: as occurred above, to bridle, to hold back. A ruling is what holds the parties back from running after their own wishes.

يَحْكُمُ بَيْنَكُمْ — "He judges between you". And the scope of "between you" is wide here: not only among the believers but between the two parties to the settlement.

عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ — knowing and wise. That these two names should come at the end of this verse is apt: throughout the verse the matter was the establishing of a ruling upon something that cannot be known (the faith in the heart). ʿAlīm: it is He who knows what cannot be known. Ḥakīm: and in spite of that, the order established is not arbitrary.

Wa in fātakum shayʾun min azwājikum ila'l-kuffāri fa-ʿāqabtum fa-ātu'lladhīna dhahabat azwājuhum mithla mā anfaqū, wa'ttaqullāha'lladhī antum bihi muʾminūn

"If any of your wives escapes to the unbelievers and you then obtain (a return), give to those whose wives are gone the like of what they have spent. Act responsibly towards God, in whom you believe."

The tenth verse had set up a reciprocal settlement. This verse regulates the case in which that settlement does not work: what happens if the other side does not make the payment?

The answer is striking: the community makes it good from within itself. That is, an individual loss is socialised. What the verse establishes is, in today's language, a kind of risk-sharing: a right that cannot be collected from outside is met from inside.

The idea behind this is important. The person has suffered a loss because he belongs to the community — his wife has gone over to the other side's order. The verse does not leave that loss on the person's back.

The root ع-ق-ب: heel. From here all the derivatives arise: ʿāqiba (outcome — the heel of a matter), taʿqīb (to follow on someone's heels), ʿuqūba (punishment — what comes after the deed), ʿaqīb (the one who comes after), muʿāqaba (to be in turn — when one goes, the other comes).

On the meaning of the verb here the commentaries have different readings:

Variant readings are also transmitted concerning the pattern of the verb (readings in the three-letter form, the doubled form and the ifʿāl pattern). Because I am not sure to which imām each reading is ascribed, I give no names. I can say that the differences bring the meaning largely to the same place, and change only in whose favour and by what route the act comes about.

The substance of the ruling is the same on all the readings: the community into whose hand something comes pays the right of the one who has suffered loss.

Instead of saying "one of your wives" the verse uses the word شَىْءٌ ("a thing"). This is a pattern of indefiniteness in Arabic and means "any one, some part"; it does not mean that the word here turns a human being into an object. The Qurʾān uses the word shayʾ extremely widely.

Even so, the choice of the word may carry a function: the sentence is describing a legal situation and setting up a general pattern — "if a loss of this kind is suffered". Indeed the ruling itself is framed not for a single event but for a situation that can recur.

The close of the verse is a reminder of taqwā following a financial ruling — and the adjectival clause is striking: "God, in whom you are believing".

Why this caveat? Because the subject of the verse is money, and money is the area in which rulings are most easily bent. In a reckoning of settlement, who is to receive how much and who paid what is the most disputable of subjects. This is why the verse ties the ruling to faith itself: the working of this order is left not to a mechanism of supervision but to the taqwā of the parties.

And the link within the sūra: in the first verse a person carried the community's information outside in order to protect his family. Here the community meets from within the loss of one who has lost his family. The sūra gives a structural answer to the source of the weakness in the first verse: so that a person should not be forced to seek a remedy on his own, the community sets up an order of making good.

I present this link as a reading; the text does not establish it explicitly. But that two verses should stand in the same sūra at the two ends of the same problem is worth noting.

Yā ayyuha'n-nabiyyu idhā jāʾaka'l-muʾminātu yubāyiʿnaka ʿalā an lā yushrikna billāhi shayʾan wa lā yasriqna wa lā yaznīna wa lā yaqtulna awlādahunna wa lā yaʾtīna bi-buhtānin yaftarīnahū bayna aydīhinna wa arjulihinna wa lā yaʿṣīnaka fī maʿrūfin fa-bāyiʿhunna wa'staghfir lahunnallāh, innallāha Ghafūrun Raḥīm

"O Prophet! When believing women come to you to pledge allegiance to you — that they will associate nothing with God, will not steal, will not commit fornication, will not kill their children, will not bring a slander they have fabricated between their hands and their feet, and will not disobey you in what is right — then accept their pledge and ask God's forgiveness for them. Indeed God is forgiving, merciful."

The root ب-ي-ع: to sell, and to buy. The root is counted among the aḍdād — the same verb states both selling and buying; because in Arabic the word has become the name of the transaction that covers both sides of a sale.

And the concrete source of bayʿa is this: in Arab custom a transaction was made final by the parties striking hands. A bayʿa is this striking of hands. That is, at its origin the pledge is an act of contract — not a rite of worship, of veneration, of surrender.

This knowledge of the root is decisive for understanding the word correctly. A pledge is a contract: there are two parties, it has a content, and the content consists of countable articles. Indeed in this verse the articles are counted one by one.

The Qurʾān uses this language of trade openly in the context of the pledge: "God has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth, in return for the Garden" (al-Tawba 9/111). The same root, the same logic.

Attend to the word order of the verse: the women come (jāʾaka), they pledge (yubāyiʿnaka), and their pledge is accepted (fa-bāyiʿhunna). There is no intermediary in between — no father, no husband, no representative of a tribe passes through.

This is a fact the verse records, and it must be said as it is: here the women become parties in their own name to a political and legal contract.

This must be said without exaggeration. The verse is not making a declaration of equality; it is describing a procedure. But the procedure itself says something: the owner of an undertaking is the one who gives it.

فَبَايِعْهُنَّ — an imperative. The Prophet is commanded to accept their pledge. That is, the acceptance of the other party is laid down as an obligation too; the contract is completed on both sides.

The most striking feature of the list: five are negative, and the sixth too is in a negative pattern. That is, the pledge is essentially an undertaking about what will not be done. A contract of limits.

The second striking feature: there is no prayer, no fasting, no pilgrimage. This shows that the list is not a list of piety. Everything counted is a deed that directly concerns someone else — someone's property, someone's body, someone's life, someone's good name. That is, the pledge describes the minimum of the public order.

The list has kin among other lists in the Qurʾān; in subject matter it overlaps with the series of commands at al-Anʿām 6/151-152.

In this article the matter treated in the section on Sūrat al-Takwīr returns.

At al-Takwīr 81/8-9 ٱلْمَوْءُۥدَة (the girl buried alive) had been treated: the root و-أ-د, "to press a weight upon"; the word is a passive participle, that is, it speaks from the position of the victim and does not mention the agent. There a comparison was also made with al-Naḥl 16/59, and it was shown that in that verse the act is ascribed to the father.

Now a third position is added and the picture is completed:

Two observations emerge.

First: the deed is not laid upon one sex. The Qurʾān mentions the same offence in three separate places with three separate subjects. In al-Naḥl it is the father who deliberates; here it is the mother who gives the undertaking. The text does not fix the killing of children as "the crime of fathers".

Second: here the object is not feminine. In al-Takwīr al-mawʾūda was feminine, and as was recorded in that section the Qurʾān appears to distinguish two separate phenomena: the killing of girls out of shame (mawʾūda) and the killing of children out of poverty (awlād — al-Isrāʾ 17/31, al-Anʿām 6/151). The word occurring in this verse is أَوْلَٰدَهُنَّ, that is, the sex is not specified. The article covers both at once.

And that the article should be laid down as a condition of the pledge is meaningful in itself. This is no longer a censure or a warning; it is an article written as a condition of entry into the community. The reckoning opened in al-Takwīr turns here into a clause of a contract.

The root ب-ه-ت: to strike dumb, to leave one dumbfounded.

The Qurʾān uses this root in a striking place: after the answer Abraham gave, by way of the direction of the sun's rising, to the ruler who disputed with him — "فَبُهِتَ ٱلَّذِى كَفَرَ" — "the one who disbelieved was struck dumb" (al-Baqara 2/258).

That is, buhtān is not an ordinary lie: it is a slander so unexpected as to leave the hearer dumbfounded, one before which he does not know what to say. The word itself describes the effect of the slander.

يَفْتَرِينَهُۥ بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِنَّ وَأَرْجُلِهِنَّ — "which they fabricate between their hands and their feet". There are two readings of this expression:

The first reading is the more widespread and agrees with the context. The second is also a reading the wording permits. I make no definite choice between them; and I record this: both readings forbid the same thing — to destroy a lineage or a reputation by a fabricated word.

A detail to be noted: the list places this article immediately after the killing of children. Both articles concern the child — one the child's life, the other whose the child is. The Qurʾān's sensitivity on the subject of lineage is seen elsewhere too.

The last article of the list, and perhaps the most important.

مَعْرُوف — the root ع-ر-ف: to know, to recognise. Maʿrūf is a passive participle: what is known, recognised, not found strange. Its opposite is munkar: root ن-ك-ر, not recognised, found strange.

This structure of the word carries an important feature of Qurʾānic morality: the good is named as "the known". That is, the moral right does not come from outside as a command wholly foreign to people; it is familiar, and a person recognises it when he sees it.

And the caveat the article establishes is this: obedience is bounded by what is right.

To see the weight of this one must look at who is being addressed. This is not an article about obedience to some ordinary authority; it is an article about obedience to the Prophet. That is, even obedience to the highest authority is not unconditional. And the text writes the caveat into a contract set out by that very authority.

This is not a caveat that stands alone in the Qurʾān; the caveat of obedience in what is right has been one of the supports of the later Islamic discussion of the limits of authority.

After the pledge is accepted, one further command comes: ask forgiveness for them.

This is a noteworthy completion. A contract has been made; the parties have given their undertakings. And the close of the contract is not a sanction but a prayer.

And now look at the link within the sūra. In the fourth verse, Abraham's asking forgiveness for his father had been excepted from the exemplarity. Here, asking forgiveness is commanded.

The same act, in the same sūra, with two opposite rulings. And the difference lies in the addressee — not in the act itself.

This symmetry makes the exception of the fourth verse rightly understood. Asking forgiveness is not a forbidden thing; the sūra commands it twelve verses later. What was excepted was asking forgiveness in a particular situation and for a particular addressee.

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ — and the verse closes with the same two names as the seventh verse. That the sūra should repeat these two names is another way in which the text holds within itself the balance between severity and forgiveness.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā tatawallaw qawman ghaḍiballāhu ʿalayhim, qad yaʾisū mina'l-ākhirati kamā yaʾisa'l-kuffāru min aṣḥābi'l-qubūr

"O you who believe! Do not take as allies a people upon whom God is angry. They have despaired of the hereafter, just as the unbelievers have despaired of those in the graves."

The sūra closes where it opened, and does so with three elements:

The same address, the same root, the same prohibition — in a different pattern. This is a structure the Qurʾān often uses at the close of a sūra: the text closes the ring by repeating in another form the sentence with which it began.

And recall what has come in between: the prohibition was laid down (1), its ground given (2), its motive pulled out (3), an example shown (4-6), a door of hope opened (7), its scope narrowed (8-9), its application made (10-12). Now the prohibition is laid down again, after all these caveats.

The order matters. The same prohibition does not say the same thing at the beginning and at the end of a sūra. Read at the beginning it looks absolute; read at the end it is read together with all the caveats laid down in between. The text's own arrangement contains its own interpretation.

غَضَب — the root غ-ض-ب: anger. In the dictionaries the root's connection with the sense "hardness, stiffness" is pointed to; it is transmitted that a word from the same root is used for hard rock as well.

This construct is from the same root as ٱلْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ in the last verse of al-Fātiḥa.

And here there is a caveat that must, per the method (Method), be written plainly: this expression does not give a community a permanent label.

The reasons are these:

First, the form of the verb. Ghaḍiba is a perfect verb — it states a situation that has come about. It is not the description of a nature, an essence, a destiny.

Second, the verse's own ground. The sentence does not end there; immediately after, an attribute is counted: قَدْ يَئِسُوا۟ مِنَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ — "they have despaired of the hereafter". That is, the verse describes whom it is speaking of not by a lineage or a name but by an attitude.

Third, the seventh verse within the sūra itself. "Perhaps God will put an affection between you and those with whom you are at enmity." A sūra that says positions can change does not at its end declare an unchanging identity.

As is written in the method (Method): what the verse describes are attributes; whoever carries that attribute is included in it.

The root ي-أ-س: to cut off hope. The Qurʾān uses this root in a heavy context: "Do not despair of God's mercy; none despairs of God's mercy but the people who disbelieve" (Yūsuf 12/87).

And the diagnosis in this verse is worth noting: what is counted is not denial but despair. That is, the situation the verse describes is not "they do not believe in the hereafter" but "they have no expectation left of the hereafter".

The difference is fine but real. Not to believe is a conviction; to despair is a state. A person may say that he believes in the hereafter and yet expect nothing from it — and indeed what was laid down in the sixth verse as the condition of exemplarity was exactly the opposite of this: li-man kāna yarjūllāha wa'l-yawma'l-ākhir — "for whoever hopes in God and the Last Day".

The sūra thus sets two states over against one another: hoping (6) and despairing (13). And exemplarity is tied to the first, the prohibition to the second. The measure is again not an identity but an orientation.

On the sentence of comparison the commentaries have two readings, and both are possible in terms of the language:

The first reading is the more widespread and fits the word order of the sentence better. The second has also been defended. I make no definite choice between them.

What the two readings have in common is this: the comparison describes a despair from which there is no return. And the verse makes this the last sentence of the sūra.

The sūra closes, after a verse that opens hope (7), with a verse that describes despair (13). At first sight this may look like a step backwards.

It is not; the two verses speak of two different things. The seventh verse said that the enmity can be lifted by God — that the door is in His hand. The thirteenth describes the own state of a community that has cut off its expectation of the hereafter.

That is, one speaks of the possibility of a change coming from outside, the other of the situation one is in. The sūra records both, and the two do not contradict: that a situation is changeable does not mean that it does not exist at present.

Read on its own, the sūra carries sentences that appear to contradict one another. Read together, the contradiction lifts, because every sentence has work to do. We can summarise the whole of the sūra thus:

The method of the sūra is this: after laying down a prohibition, to place a caveat in every direction in which that prohibition might overflow.

• The prohibition was severe → verse 7 limited the duration of the enmity.
• The prohibition might have become general → verse 8 cut its scope.
• The prohibition might have destroyed human relationships → the word birr was chosen.
• The prohibition might have produced a wholesale ruling → the caveat minhum was placed in verse 7.
• The prohibition might have cancelled financial rights → verses 10-11 regulated the settlement.
• The prohibition might have turned into a demand for boundless obedience → verse 12 laid down the caveat fī maʿrūf.

This is the text's way of balancing itself. And it shows why it is wrong to read the sūra from a single verse: every verse stands qualified by another verse than itself.

The whole matter of the sūra is summed up by the distribution of two roots:

This table closes the most disputed question of the sūra. The object of the prohibition is always a word from the first root. The second root never occurs as the object of the prohibition; it occurs once in the description of the event, once in the attitude of the other side, and once in a positive promise.

The sūra does not lay down a prohibition of affection. It lays down a rule for determining which side one is on.

First: two kinds of relation, two separate measures. This is the most useful distinction of the sūra, and it works today just the same. To get on well with a person, to help him, to give him his due, is one thing; to lean your back against a person or a structure, to attach yourself to him, to allow him to decide in your name, is another. When these two are confused, two errors arise at once: either people are dealt with unjustly merely because they are different, or one is dragged inside a structure merely because one gets on well with it. The sūra cuts off both.

Second: the measure's being ascertainable. The most modern side of the eighth verse is that its measure is verifiable. A rule that takes belief as its measure gives the one who applies it unlimited discretion; the result is inevitably arbitrariness. A rule that takes deed as its measure ties the applier's hands: if there is no deed to be shown, there is no ruling either. This is a fundamental principle of law, and the verse lays it down as a rule of relationship.

Third: the duration of enmity. The idea carried by the seventh verse — that enmity arises from a position, and that positions can change — is something that works today both in international relations and in personal life. The most dangerous moment of a conflict is the moment at which the parties begin to define one another as a nature; for after that point peace becomes conceptually impossible. Even after declaring the enmity in the hardest language, the sūra leaves the door open.

Fourth: a good feeling flowing to the wrong place. The weakness diagnosed by the first verse was not bad intention. Today too the most frequent harm within a structure arises not from treachery but from personal attachments getting in front of institutional responsibility. That the verse should name this "affection" and forbid it nevertheless shows how fine the matter is: what is forbidden is not the feeling but the load the feeling carries.

Fifth: an order of making good. What the eleventh verse establishes — that the loss of one who has suffered because he belongs to the community should be met from within — is the structural answer to the weakness of the first verse. When a community leaves its members to shift for themselves, it has in fact produced the behaviour of the first verse. To lay down a rule is not enough; the conditions under which the rule can be applied must be established too. The sūra does both at once.

Sixth: the caveat on obedience. The fī maʿrūf caveat of the twelfth verse is among the sentences most deserving to be dwelt upon. Into a contract of loyalty an article has been placed writing that contract's limit — and the party addressed is the highest authority. This is the most important caveat a community can place while establishing its own inner order: attachment does not cover everything.

At several points throughout the text a definite language was deliberately not used; the reader needs to know these:

• The occasion of revelation and the Companion's name. The event was transmitted with the caveat that it is widely transmitted in the hadith sources, and according to its sense, not its wording. The name that occurs consistently in the reports was mentioned, but no ruling was built upon the name and no definite sentence of the form "the sūra came down upon this" was written. No separate ruling was given about the degree of soundness of the report.

• The reading of the sūra's name. No preference was adopted as to which of the readings al-Mumtaḥina and al-Mumtaḥana is the earlier.

• The dating of the verses one by one. The transmission tying verses 10-11 to the period after al-Ḥudaybiya and verses 1-3 to the preparation for the conquest of Mecca was conveyed as a possibility; it was not settled.

• The wording of the article of the Treaty of al-Ḥudaybiya on return. It was stated that there are differing transmissions as to whether the article covered women; the exact wording of the text was not given.

• The function of the particle bi in the phrase bi'l-mawadda at 60/1. Two readings were given in a table; the second was preferred and it was written that it is not binding.

• The variant readings of the verb yafṣilu at 60/3. The existence of the differences was transmitted, but to which imām each is ascribed was not written — because I am not sure on this point. Their effect on the meaning was described in general terms.

• To which clause the adverbial yawma'l-qiyāmati at 60/3 attaches. Both attachments were held possible; no preference was adopted.

• What the exception at 60/4 attaches to. Two views were given in a table; the first was recorded as the widespread one and it was said that the sixth verse supports it. This is a preference, and it is not binding.

• The meaning of the fitna prayer at 60/5. Two readings were given; the second was preferred and it was written that this is my own reading and is not binding.

• Whether the particle ʿasā at 60/7 states certainty when ascribed to God. The classical approach was conveyed as a transmitted report; my own reading was marked separately.

• The claim of abrogation regarding 60/8. Two views were given in a table; the view that it is muḥkam was found the stronger, and it was recorded that this is not binding.

• The reason why birr comes before qisṭ at 60/8. Two explanations were given, and it was written plainly that both are my own reading and not a transmitted report.

• The content of the test at 60/10. The explanations transmitted in the classical commentaries were conveyed as possibilities; it was recorded that the wording of the verse does not describe a procedure.

• The meaning of the verb fa-ʿāqabtum at 60/11 and its variant readings. Three readings were given in a table; no preference was adopted. The existence of variant readings was stated but no imām's name was given.

• The meaning of the expression bayna aydīhinna wa arjulihinna at 60/12. Two readings were given; it was said that the first is the widespread one, and no definite preference was adopted.

• The direction of the comparison at 60/13. Two readings were given in a table; the first was found more widespread and more suited to the word order, but no definite preference was adopted.

• No legal ruling was drawn from fa-ʿāqabtum at 60/11 or from the articles of the list at 60/12. Per the method (Method) no legal ruling is issued in this commentary; nor were the views of the schools of law classified in this section.

• On the legal character of "the women's pledge" at 60/12 no generalising conclusion was drawn; the procedure the verse records was conveyed as it is.